WeChat group fission practice: fission 1,000 groups within 30 days!

Starting last year, the term "private domain traffic" became popular. I believe that all of you have already weighed its importance in your minds. Coupled with the fire of the epidemic, it has become even brighter.

When it comes to private domain traffic, whether it is e-commerce, micro-business, physical stores, or Internet products, communities are an indispensable part. So, how to play? There are many tutorials from big guys on the Internet, but buying 10 tutorials is not as good as 1 practical experience. So today I’m going to share a practical experience in WeChat group fission, which is highly replicable and I hope it will give you some inspiration.

01 Background

When blockchain was popular in 2018, there was the "Three O'clock Sleepless Blockchain" group, and then there was "The melee in the "20,000 communities" in the cryptocurrency circle: a trader made 520 million yuan in half a year and a group of 100,000 people was built in one day." The cryptocurrency circle can create a group of 100,000 people in one day! It’s amazing and curious, how did they build it? It can be said that all possible methods have been used, including coercion and inducement, and it is difficult to tell the real "three o'clock" from the fake!

In March 2018, out of curiosity, I also built a blockchain community with a scale of 40,000 people, and I did it all by myself in 7 days of my spare time (poster design, copywriting, tool development, all done by myself, not during working hours), and successfully sold it to a project party for cash.

Although the sales amount was not much, but with the experience of the rapid rise of the cryptocurrency community, can it be used for the fission of other products? Of course we can. Even if we fall short, as long as the model is right and we have enough time, we can still achieve great things!

We definitely can’t use “coercion”, so let’s use “inducement” to the extreme and give it a try! The initial purpose of this fission activity is to increase the number of groups and the total number of group members. If possible, it would be a good idea to increase the number of your personal friends at the same time.

Another important reason is that, without a budget, there is almost no other cost except the time cost of me and other two colleagues. "Zero cost" marketing is what every company wants to do. Even if the effect does not meet expectations, it can still be regarded as a process of accumulating experience.

02 Fission thinking

1. Highlight value and lower the threshold

The world is bustling with people, all for the sake of profit; without profit no one will get up early. Therefore, we do business to make money; we show kindness for no reason to gain the right to choose a mate first; we greet each other and gain trust in order to get help from each other when necessary... "Benefit" can be defined as anything attractive.

In the past, we were dealing with public domain traffic, and we followed a funnel model. Now it is different. Private domain traffic follows a user-oriented operation route, and we want point-to-point direct access, providing sufficiently high "user perceived value" to attract customers, rather than looking for a needle in a haystack.

Therefore, based on the above, our fission idea is to first create some "bait" so that potential users can "take the bait". Just maximize the user-perceivable value and minimize the user-perceived cost.

2. Those tried and tested marketing ideas

We are producers, but also consumers. We are accustomed to all kinds of marketing every day: “Store sale expires, last day, 10% off for all items”, “Jiangnan Leather Factory has closed down…”

But if we look at this from a marketer’s perspective, can we also learn some experience or verify some theories? The routines throughout the ages are the same, and the Thirty-Six Stratagems have been passed down from generation to generation. Some methods will never go out of date.

For example, what are the characteristics of food delivery platforms like Meituan/Ele.me in attracting new customers? Give coupons!

1) High value: 15 yuan off for purchases over 25 yuan;

2) Low threshold: Who would be reluctant to spend 10 yuan to order lunch? Anyone can use it;

3) Short usage period: It can only be used today. If you don’t use it, it will be a loss.

High value, low threshold, now! The customer's perceived value is perfectly amplified at the moment, so large that you can close the deal directly!

Although this is an old trick, it has been proven to be effective in marketing.

If it is not possible to directly bring economic benefits to users (such as red envelopes, but unfortunately there is no budget), then think about other things, such as providing convenient services (tool-type), satisfying psychological needs (personal image, crying poor or showing off), and satisfying the need to improve one's own abilities?

Everyone has the potential urge to improve themselves. Compared with physical rewards and red envelopes, satisfying the other person's psychological needs is the simplest, cheapest and most worthwhile way to try. The "Quickly Improve Yourself" data pack is the "bait".

03 Preliminary preparation

1. Look for tempting “bait” packages

If you don’t have a user portrait for your product, or are not clear about the current portrait, you can use Blue MC as a simple reference.

Our products are in the field of financial management, such as P2P, installment payments, financial management, and credit loans. So, take "XX loan" as a reference.

It can be seen that those born in the 1980s and 1990s account for more than 80%, and their main interests are concentrated in technology, investment, sales, management, etc., so if we find the corresponding dry goods, it should arouse their interest.

Just give it a try first to see if it works or not. When there is no data to support it, you can only make judgments based on limited information. Moreover, if you use your brain, you will know that many people want this kind of popular and highly integrated information.

There are a lot of paid course resources online. So, organize some authoritative and credible content and save them on a network disk. If it doesn’t work, ask on Taobao.

The "bait" is complete. You may ask, if it is so easy to find, don’t they search for it themselves?

Personally, I feel that organizing information still requires a certain amount of time, and most people will question the authority of the information they find. However, if someone recommends it and it is ready-made, then it will be different. They will feel more at ease.

It should be noted that after the community is established, members’ purpose of receiving useful information has been achieved and they may leave the group. If you don’t want to lose members too quickly, then prepare more information, throw it into the group in stages , and strongly hint that as long as you stay in the group, there will be more knowledge sharing, even big names answering questions, lucky draws and other activities! In this way, group members will have the motivation to stay. Until you find a way to monetize it.

2. Poster design: clear layout, clear goals, exaggerated temptation

The design of community posters is different from that of ordinary APP opening screen posters. Unfortunately, designers are not operators, and they often pursue a simple style or performance art. If you don't make the design requirements clear in advance, even if they work very hard, it still won't be the result you want, because they really can't get your point.

1) Social posters are used in group chats and Moments. The first thing you see is the thumbnail, so in order to ensure the open rate, even the thumbnail should make it clear at a glance what the poster is about. Just like when we go to the countryside to paint walls, we require that the content can be clearly seen from 100 meters away, otherwise it will be unqualified.

2) The visual effect is secondary, but it doesn’t mean it has to be ugly. The most important thing is to arrange the content you want to express reasonably.

3) Credit endorsement, pain point description, highlight content, as well as free and tense feeling all need to be reflected.

3. Description: Avoid beating around the bush and being literary. The more straightforward, the more shocking.

I will briefly explain the four ways to write promotional copy without further elaboration:

1) Pain point copywriting, fear-inducing problem description + solution. For example, "How long has it been since you finished reading a book? Tik Tok is not everything to you, get 100 e-books for free!"

2) Authoritative copywriting, well-known brands or eye-catching titles + shareable content. For example, "A Peking University mother teaches her children poetry lessons" and "The world memory champion teaches you to remember everything you see."

3) Gain-type copywriting: product name + gain XXX. "If you master this trick, it will be hard for your child not to become a top student."

4) Quick-made copywriting, which takes less time and produces good results. "It only takes 10 minutes a day to teach you how to lose 30 pounds in a month"

4. Auxiliary tools are essential weapons

There are many community management assistants on the market, such as wetool, Jianqunbao, Baojuice, etc. The free tool has limited functions, but it does have keyword grouping, smart kicking, welcome messages, and automatic responses. If you want to play with something more advanced, you need to pay for it. For example, you can generate customized posters, count the number of people scanning the code, and use live codes to continuously establish ordinary groups and large groups.

If it involves a public account, you can also use Taskbao to create a group after interacting in the public account; you can use the mini program group to connect to the group and save the group member information. Group live broadcasts also have synchronization software, which can synchronize voice, pictures, and videos, which is very convenient.

In addition, in order to automatically add more friends, like Moments, etc., I also used the Keyshot to develop a script that simulates manual clicks. Simulating clicks is an external operation and does not touch the underlying protocol of WeChat, so there is no risk of account suspension if used properly.

Using tools well can get you twice the result with half the effort. But although the tool is good, don't abuse it. Once again, no matter which tool you use, you must follow the operating suggestions given by the platform and the rules of WeChat, otherwise it will not be worth it if your account is blocked.

5. Reserve of seed user groups: cold start is not easy

I have a habit of checking what my competitors are doing before doing any activity or promotion.

Some people may say that preconceived ideas will affect subjective performance. However, the losses caused by narrow-mindedness, blind actions, and closed-door thinking cannot be compensated by regret. Avoid making the same mistakes that many competitors have made. To learn lessons, you don’t necessarily have to make mistakes yourself. Other people’s mistakes are also lessons.

Works cannot be plagiarized, but inspiration can be borrowed from each other. Designers like to browse Huaban and have their own material library; authors have their own reading notes when writing articles; similarly, partners who do operations also need sources of inspiration and must have their own event case library. To achieve user fission, you need a group of seed users to help you achieve the initial fission.

No matter how good an activity is, no one will know about it without a certain number of seed users as the first wave of disseminators. The spread of information through the circle of friends of a few colleagues is too weak, and it will die without any dissemination activities.

How can we quickly accumulate community seed users? For those big guys who already have accumulated original customers, please ignore the following method.

My approach is:

1) Sneak into the user base of competing products and post advertisements

Okay, I admit it's not glorious, but the users are precise and sometimes it's effective. Moreover, it is just sharing of useful information, without exposing our brand, so it is not considered as real poaching for competitors.

Then it is important to note that when using your own account as a pseudonym, you should not always use a small account to support different user groups of the same product. In the eyes of the group owner, you are obviously a shill. When joining a group, try to scan the group owner's code or let the assistant add you to the group. Do not invite your own people. If an advertisement is discovered, the person who invited you will also be kicked out of the group.

2) You can also join some external communities such as discount groups, purchasing groups, WeChat business groups, etc. It is always better to cast a wide net than not cast a wide net.

If you don’t have any reserves at ordinary times, you can add more friends now. With more friends, naturally many people will invite you to join their groups, just like you also have the need to create a group, and they are each other's "private traffic".

3) If you have enough time, you can be merciful

Leave your own small account on Baidu Knows, Wukong Q&A, Zhihu, Tieba, video websites, and major self-media platforms, and people who are interested will naturally add you.

4) Not only should you join groups and friends, but you should also chat frequently and manage your circle of friends well.

Increase the overall weight of the trumpet so that it is not easy to be blocked. Your phone shouldn’t be too bad and should have enough memory, otherwise it will respond slowly or even freeze due to too many group messages.

Before starting the fission, our three small accounts had accumulated more than 100 industry-related user groups , with an average of more than 200 people in each group. There are more than 70 external social groups , including miscellaneous discount groups, takeaway groups, course groups, etc., and more than 30 advertising groups (including 2 advertising groups with 500 people established by myself, so I am not afraid of being kicked out). There are also 8 colleagues in the circle of friends.

The time is short, and there is only this much reserve. If there is less, I’m afraid fission will not occur. So let’s go ahead and talk about it later.

04 Fission process design

The design of the process, while remaining true to the purpose of the activity, depends largely on the tools we have at hand. Because without the help of tools, manual operation is inefficient, costly and not cost-effective.

Choose any free tool from the ones introduced above and try it out to understand its functions and operation steps.

Note that stability must be tested. If the tool is not used properly, for example, there is a problem with the fission rule setting, then you will be tired of cleaning up the mess afterwards.

Of course, if you have enough budget, you can choose to pay, where you will have more gameplay options. You can set it so that you must invite a certain number of friends before you can proceed to the next step, in order to quantify the fission effect.

Basic principle: Let users get the information into the bowl while it is being transmitted. (The following process is based on the tool to achieve that one user can only enter one group)

05 About Risk Prediction

The cost of this fission is close to zero, so even if it fails there won’t be any big loss, and you can also summarize the experience, so give it a try. The only risk is that the shared content may be suspected of infringement. There is no solution to this for the time being, so be careful. However, there are a few points to note:

1. Generally, community fission can easily involve inducing sharing, which may lead to WeChat blocking links or even domain names. My personal experience is that if you do it well and reach a certain level, you will be blocked regardless of whether you induce sharing or not. If we count the short-lived phenomenal H5 and mini-programs in the history of WeChat, we will find that none of them ended up being blocked.

2. If the activity process is not considered maturely, some loopholes are inevitable, making it easy for others to take advantage of you. Therefore, go through the entire process several times, find possible loopholes, and assess what kind of losses may be caused and how to deal with them. Usually, we should have some understanding of gray channels, not for the purpose of using them, but to take into account the adverse interference caused by these gray means when designing the activity process.

3. Have a plan B. If a major vulnerability really occurs and cannot be avoided, you will know the importance of plan B.

06 Execution

After the above preparations are ready, start working.

I temporarily divide channels into three types: competitor user group, external industry group, and advertising group. I think the user quality is declining in sequence, and the quality of the advertising group is the worst. Therefore, the three small accounts correspond to three channels respectively, and the final result should be clear at a glance.

Day 1

First wave: Start at 7:00 pm, a small amount to see the effect

1. The poster promotes 20 user groups. There are mixed reviews in the group, but the good thing is that no matter whether people like it or not, it has all been exposed, and the vests are here to smooth things over. I was not kicked out within half an hour, and people continued to add small accounts.
2. Poster push 15 external groups
3. Poster promotes his 2 advertising groups

The second wave: Continue to push the previously pushed groups at 22:00 in the evening. Let all members who have not seen it see it, so that those who have seen it can have a deeper impression, and squeeze out the value of the group as soon as possible before being kicked out.

Day 2

The content pushed in the evening is generally still fresh in the minds of those who have seen it, so don’t push it again the next morning.

The results of the first day were very instructive. By the afternoon of the second day, the number of group members in trumpet 1 and trumpet 2 was almost the same, close to 100; trumpet 3 only created a group of 20 people...

The quality of the seed user reserve group is really important. Even if there are many people in the advertising group, they are just small advertising accounts and few people see them. People are more interested in information that is universal.

Be sure to summarize in time. If the direction is wrong, all your efforts will be in vain, so you can basically consider giving up the advertising group for the next step.

In addition, chat with group members about what information they like the most, what other content they want, what opinions or suggestions they have, etc.

It’s basically the same rhythm and scale as yesterday, but this time the advertising group directly pushed it to all 30 groups.

Day 3

The effect on the afternoon of the third day was an amplified version of the effect on the previous day: trumpets 1 and 2 each created a second group with a total number of nearly 500 people, and trumpet 3 didn’t even have a full group of 100 people.

The direction is very clear. The higher the quality of the reserve group, the faster the fission. The more vertical the content, the faster the fission. In addition to continuing to use the original group fission, the next step is to further develop other external communities to increase the accumulation of basic users for fission. Trumpet 3 directly abandons the advertising group and joins the array of trumpets 1 and 2 to help.

Day 4

As of the afternoon of the 4th day, all reserve groups had been pushed at least once. If they continued to push, they would only be kicked out of the group faster. Therefore, adjust the frequency and push the communities that have already been pushed again every one or two days. Keep pushing until you get kicked.

If the user scope of washing in the group is limited, then as the number of people who add friends with small accounts to ask for useful information increases, the fission of posters in the circle of friends begins to show its effect. The number of users began to increase rapidly, and the group no longer relied solely on other groups to acquire users.

So, what you need to do in the next 26 days is:

1. Make good use of tools: automatically create groups, set rules for kicking people out, group rules, and use keywords to create groups, with a focus on ensuring the quality of user communication in the circle of friends, which cannot be deleted or visible in groups, etc. A reminder about the group rules: You are welcome to invite friends to join the group.
2. Ensure that the content is sufficient, research whether it is attractive, and continue to output to the community to maintain a good community atmosphere
3. Simultaneously expand other vertical industry communities and other external communities to further promote community fission

The peak was reached around the 19th day, with 40-50 groups created every day. The number then gradually decreased, and by the 30th day, the original 200 groups had accumulated and been updated to more than 1,000 groups.

Logically speaking, as long as there are people interested in this kind of information, group fission will not stop. However, the reality is not what we imagined. During the peak period, due to the restrictions on passively adding friends on WeChat, many people who visited Moments and wanted to add friends were lost because they were unable to agree to be added immediately. Later, this information became "common goods", fewer and fewer people were interested in it, and it gradually declined.

Note

1) Try to avoid Saturdays and Sundays because people are not very motivated and are all relaxing and don’t really want to study.

2) Even if you add friends passively through a secondary account, the number of friends you can add each day is limited. You can only add 30 or more friends at a time, and you need to wait for more than 1 hour before agreeing to be added again.

If you are unable to continue to create a group due to the limit on the number of friends you can add passively, then immediately change the group creation mode and directly create a 100-person scan code group (now the number of scan code groups can reach 200 people).

3) Don’t make stupid mistakes. For example, I made a mistake before by sending pirated materials to the group where people were signing up for genuine courses. I was kicked out in seconds, and it’s good enough that they didn’t pursue the matter.

4) How to operate the community after it is established?

In fact, sometimes it doesn’t matter if the community is not active. For sharing useful information like this, everyone just takes it and leaves, so there’s nothing much to say, but it doesn’t mean the quality is not high. What you should think about at this time is how to make them stay.

5) Several commonly used community operation techniques:

The welcome words, group introduction and group rules are relatively simple. At this stage when everyone doesn’t know each other yet, throw out a few universal or hot topics first to see if anyone responds. If no one responds and you send out a few red envelopes, there will always be a few people talking. If it doesn't work, just talk to yourself under a pseudonym, and slowly people will come to join in the fun. After chatting for a long time, you will find that there are always a few people in the group who are very active. If no one is talking, just @ them individually and pull them out to chat. Generally, they will say a few words. Don't just chat, remember to talk about your business at the right time.

07 Channel Promotion

Three suggestions:

1. Be sure to do a good job of channel marking and understand the user path. Otherwise, if there is no distinction, there will be no data to review later.
2. Don’t push too hard in the early stages, and follow the principle of trying small batches and then releasing them in large quantities.
3. If conditions permit, adding A/B test optimization will increase the conversion rate to a certain extent.

08 Review Summary

Facts have proved that the model of solid information + fission works.

1) First, during the cold start phase, the reserve seed user group is still too small, so the initial growth is relatively slow.

2) Re-understanding of the so-called “heavy operation” of community. In fact, the group-building stage is very simple and requires limited human resource investment. However, the subsequent operations are not as simple as imagined: the tool can identify some users who send advertisements and automatically eliminate them, but the tool is not omnipotent and many advertisements cannot be identified. In order to maintain community order, such people must be eliminated, and manually! With so many social groups, it is impossible to keep up with all the messages. The location of the groups changes every second, and you can’t even “catch” a group if you want to click on it.

3) So far, this model has been almost overused by everyone. Both Internet products and knowledge payment projects are using it. Users have gradually become accustomed to it and are no longer sensitive to it, and the effect has been correspondingly discounted. However, our marketing psychology strategy will not change. If you continue to use this model, it would be best to use your brain to combine it with your own products and add some new gameplay. You can also use paid tools to achieve smarter and more accurate fission.

In fact, so-called innovation is sometimes just adding some of your own ideas based on others. Every year, e-commerce platforms hold big promotions on "618" and "Double 11", and there are also various activities at the Spring Festival red envelope distribution site. There are countless other successful cases. It is countless times more practical to simply find some reviews and summaries to study than any paper-based courses.

4) Before the "bait" information becomes "common goods", there will be a time and total amount ceiling for community fission. There are only so many people who want that information. The faster you consume it, the shorter the time will be. The slower you consume it, the longer the time will be. Sometimes this speed is limited by WeChat itself and cannot be overcome. Even if I get 10 trumpets, the total daily fission amount will increase, but the daily output of a single trumpet will not increase. The 10 small accounts will speed up the mainlandization of the "bait", and fewer people will be interested in it.

In order to continue to fission, it is necessary not only to adjust the "bait" in a timely manner to ensure that it operates small enough, but also to use the tools well and maintain the established community to realize monetization as soon as possible. If this group can no longer even click on public account articles and mini-programs, then it will truly become a dead group. Be brave and disband it, which will free up some memory.

This was just a small attempt, and there were only three people working on it throughout the whole process, and this was just part of our daily work. It’s not about how well we did, but the facts prove that if the model is working, there will always be results as long as you work hard.

The above personal cases are for your reference only. Please be brave and put them into practice!

Author: Latiaojun

Source: Latiaojun

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